History of Herbal Medicine

Herbal medicine has been around for
a long time. In China and Egypt written texts dating back
3,000 years tell of the use of plants for medicine. In Iraq,
flower pollen from eight species of medicinal flowering plant
have been found in the 60,000 year old grave of a Neanderthal
man, the family and friends of the dead man had surrounded
his body with clusters of flowers and branches at his summer-time
funeral. Of these eight species, seven are still used today
for medicine in dozens of different ways by local people.
It’s not difficult to imagine how herbal medicine might
have evolved as early man tasted his environment and noticed
bodily effects like vomiting, rapid bowel emptying, poisoning,
painkilling, sedating, stimulating and perception altering.
The more dramatic the reaction the more memorable the plant.
As time went on, each tribe added the medicinal power of herbs
in their area to its knowledge base. They methodically collected
information on herbs and developed well-defined herbal pharmacopoeias.
Indeed, well into the 20th century much of the pharmacopoeia
of scientific medicine was derived from the herbal lore of
native peoples.
In 2735 BC, the Chinese emperor Shen Nong wrote an authoritative
treatise on herbs that is still in use today. Shen Nong recommended
the use of Ma Huang (known as ephedra in the Western world),
for example, against respiratory distress. Ephedrine, extracted
from ephedra, is widely used as a decongestant. You'll find
it in its synthetic form, pseudoephedrine, in many allergy,
sinus, and cold-relief medications produced by large pharmaceutical
companies. The records of King Hammurabi of Babylon (c. 1800
BC) include instructions for using medicinal plants. Hammurabi
prescribed the use of mint for digestive disorders. Modern
research has confirmed that peppermint does indeed relieve
nausea and vomiting by mildly anaesthetising the lining of
the stomach. The entire Middle East has a rich history of
herbal healing. There are also texts surviving from the ancient
cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India that describe and
illustrate the use of many medicinal plant products, including
castor oil, linseed oil, and white poppies. In the scriptural
book of Ezekiel, which dates from the sixth century BC, we
find this admonition regarding plant life: "and the fruit
thereof shall be for meat, and leaf thereof for medicine."
Egyptian hieroglyphs show physicians of the first and second
centuries AD treating constipation with senna pods, and using
caraway and peppermint to relieve digestive upsets.
In 16th Century England, the Royal College of Physicians increasingly
monopolised healing by various Acts, so that eventually only
the rich could afford health-care. In 1543, Henry VIII (himself
a herbalist!) introduced his own Act, which made it lawful
for anyone having "knowledge and experience" to
practise as a Herbalist. This meant that the "wise woman"
of the village could once again bring her healing skills to
the aid of the poor. Throughout the Middle Ages, home-grown
botanicals were the only medicines readily available, and
for centuries, no self-respecting household would be without
a carefully tended and extensively used herb garden. For the
most part, herbal-healing lore was passed from generation
to generation by word of mouth. Mother taught daughter; the
village herbalist taught a promising apprentice. By the seventeenth
century, the knowledge of herbal medicine was widely disseminated
throughout Europe. In 1649, Nicholas Culpeper wrote A Physical
Directory, and a few years later produced The English Physician.
This respected herbal pharmacopoeia was one of the first manuals
that the layperson could use for health care, and it is still
widely referred to and quoted today. Culpeper had studied
at Cambridge University and was meant to become a great doctor,
in the academic sense of the word. Instead, he chose to apprentice
to an apothecary and eventually set up his own shop. He served
the poor people of London and became known as their neighbourhood
doctor. The herbal he created was meant for the layperson.
The first settlers to America soon found that the local plants
were different from those at home, and quickly began using
Native American remedies based on North American plants. Meanwhile
in Europe physicians were treating those who could afford
it using chemicals. In 1830 an unfortunately named Dr A L
Coffin, a student of Samuel Thomson a famous American Herbalist,
reintroduced to Europe a formalised system of Herbal Medicine,
now showing strong American influences. He was later instrumental
in the formation in 1864 of what became the National Institute
of Medical Herbalists.
The first British Pharmacopoeia was published in 1864 (Interestingly
the same year that The National Institute of Medical Herbalists
was formed!). This volume included an authoritative listing
of herbal drugs, with descriptions of their properties, uses,
dosages, and tests of purity. It was periodically revised
and became the legal standard for medical compounds. But as
Western medicine evolved from an art to a science in the nineteenth
century, information that had at one time been widely available
became the domain of comparatively few. Once scientific methods
were developed to extract and synthesise the active ingredients
in plants, pharmaceutical laboratories took over from providers
of medicinal herbs as the producers of drugs. The use of herbs,
which for most of history had been mainstream medical practice,
began to be considered unscientific, or at least unconventional,
and to fall into relative obscurity. It is interesting to
note that in the US before antibiotics were synthesized, the
herb Echinacea (which comes from the plant commonly known
as Purple Coneflower) was one of the most widely prescribed
medicines in the United States. For centuries, herbalists
prescribed Echinacea to fight infection. Today, research confirms
that the herb may influence the immune system by stimulating
disease-fighting white blood cells.

Herbal Medicine Today
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 4 billion
people, 80% of the world population, presently use herbal
medicine for some aspect of primary health care. Herbal medicine
is a major component in all indigenous peoples’ traditional
medicine and a common element in Ayurvedic, homeopathic, naturopathic,
traditional oriental and Native American Indian medicine.
WHO notes that of 119 plant-derived pharmaceutical medicines,
about 74% are used in modern medicine in ways that correlated
directly with their traditional uses as plant medicines by
native cultures. Major pharmaceutical companies are currently
conducting extensive research on plant materials gathered
from the rain forests and other places for their potential
medicinal value. Most modern physicians rely on the Monthly
Index of Medical Specialities, an extensive listing of chemically
manufactured drugs, published monthly and provided free. It
is important to note that each entry, in addition to specifying
the chemical compound and actions of a particular drug, also
includes an extensive list of contraindications and possible
side effects.
Rather than using a whole plant, pharmacologists identify,
isolate, extract, and synthesise individual components, thus
capturing the active properties. This can create problems,
however. In addition to active ingredients, plants contain
minerals, vitamins, volatile oils, glycosides, alkaloids,
bioflavanoids, and other substances that are important in
supporting a particular herb's medicinal properties. These
elements also provide an important natural safeguard. Isolated
or synthesised active compounds can become toxic in relatively
small doses; it usually takes a much greater amount of a whole
herb, with all of its components, to reach a toxic level.
Herbs are medicines, however, and they can have powerful effects.
They should not tee taken lightly.
Substances derived from the plants remain the basis for a
large proportion of the commercial medications used today
for the treatment of heart disease, high blood pressure, pain,
asthma, and other problems. For example, ephedra is an herb
used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for more than two thousand
years to treat asthma and other respiratory problems. Ephedrine,
the active ingredient in ephedra, is used in the commercial
pharmaceutical preparations for the relief of asthma symptoms
and other respiratory problems. It helps the patient to breathe
more easily. Another example of the use of an herbal preparation
in modern medicine is the foxglove plant. This herb had been
in use since 1775. At present, the powdered leaf of this plant
is known as the cardiac stimulant digitalis to the millions
of heart patients it keeps alive worldwide. The drug derived
from it is called Digoxin.
There are over 250,000 species of flowering plants on earth
very few of these are used in herbal medicine and have been
studied scientifically. Most of the research that is done
on plants continues to focus on identifying and isolating
active ingredients, rather than studying the medicinal properties
of whole plants. Herbalists, however, consider that the power
of a plant lies in the interaction of all its ingredients.
Plants used as medicines offer synergistic interactions between
ingredients both known and unknown.